Noughts and Crosses eBook

It was not so much the little chap’s look.
But to the knot of his sea-kit there was tied a bunch
of cottage-flowers—­sweet williams, boy’s
love, love-lies-bleeding, a few common striped carnations,
and a rose or two—­and the sight and smell
of them in that frowsy ’bus were like tears
on thirsty eyelids. We had ceased to pity what
we were, but the heart is far withered that cannot
pity what it has been; and it made us shudder to look
on the young face set towards the road along which
we had travelled so far. Only the minor actress
dropped a tear; but she was used to expressing emotion,
and half-way down the Strand the ’bus stopped
and she left us.

The woman with an incurable complaint touched me on
the knee.

“Speak to him,” she whispered.

But the whisper did not reach, for I was two hundred
miles away, and occupied in starting off to school
for the first time. I had two shillings in my
pocket; and at the first town where the coach baited
I was to exchange these for a coco-nut and a clasp-knife.
Also, I was to break the knife in opening the nut,
and the nut, when opened, would be sour. A sense
of coming evil, therefore, possessed me.

“Why don’t you speak to him?”

The boy glanced up, not catching her words, but suspicious:
then frowned and looked defiant.

“Ah,” she went on in the same whisper,
“it’s only the young that I pity.
Sometimes, sir—­for my illness keeps me
much awake—­I lie at night in my lodgings
and listen, and the whole of London seems filled with
the sound of children’s feet running. Even
by day I can hear them, at the back of the uproar—­”

The matrimonial agent grunted and rose, as we halted
at the top of Essex Street. I saw him slip a
couple of half-crowns into the conductor’s hand:
and he whispered something, jerking his head back
towards the interior of the ’bus. The boy
was brushing his eyes, under pretence of putting his
cap forward; and by the time he stole a look around
to see if anyone had observed, we had started again.
I pretended to stare out of the window, but marked
the wet smear on his hand as he laid it on his lap.

In less than a minute it was my turn to alight.
Unlike the matrimonial agent, I had not two half-crowns
to spare; but, catching the sick woman’s eye,
forced up courage to nod and say—­

“Good luck, my boy.”

“Good day, sir.”

A moment after I was in the hot crowd, whose roar
rolled east and west for miles. And at the back
of it, as the woman had said, in street and side-lane
and blind-alley, I heard the footfall of a multitude
more terrible than an army with banners, the ceaseless
pelting feet of children—­of Whittingtons
turning and turning again.

FORTUNIO.

At Tregarrick Fair they cook a goose in twenty-two
different ways; and as no one who comes to the fair
would dream of eating any other food, you may fancy
what, a reek of cooking fills the narrow grey street
soon after mid-day.